Some months ago, I purchased a very interesting book, Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance, written by Anna Morcom. It is full of fascinating information, and I recommend it highly. It is basically an academic work, though, and I think there are quite a few places where the writing is a bit too academic for a general audience. On the other hand, there are some extremely well written parts, including her discussion of Pakeezah, which appears within the Introduction. Within this part, I especially appreciate the way she describes and analyzes the progression of the dances.

I have been meaning to quote from that Introduction for a while. (I thought that I had, but maybe only on Facebook, since my searches of my own blog aren’t revealing anything.) I have also wanted to return to posting about Pakeezah in general, because it still stands out as my favorite film from the ’70s and one of my favorites of all time.

And then somewhat more recently, our friend Tom posted superb video clips of all of the main Pakeezah songs. (I say the main songs, because there are also excellent songs within the background music, but they are not recognized by people nearly as much.) I have been informed that there might be even better versions out from him sometime in the future, but I can’t imagine how they could be better, actually.

Now, as many people know, it is the 43rd anniversary of Meena Kumari’s death. There is a lot to remember Meena Kumari for, but I think that when most people think about Meena Kumari on her death anniversary, for many reasons, the first thing that they think about is Pakeezah.

So, putting all these ideas together, I have decided to post Anna Morcom’s descriptions of the scenes and songs and illustrate them with Tom’s videos. I thought it would make for a nice tribute this year, and I hope that others agree.

As Sahib Jan becomes increasingly alienated from and ashamed of her life as a courtesan and moves instead toward “Suhagpur,” her mode of performance becomes increasingly disembodied. Inhin logon ne le liya dupatta mera (“It is those people who have taken my dupatta”), the song she performs before finding the letter, is carefree and flirty and she dances with an innocent abandon.

The next song, Thade rahio oh banke yaar re (“Stay awhile, handsome friend”), is much less light-hearted. In the song, she enacts an imaginary meeting with a lover who is present only in her mind. The song is never finished as a male audience member fires a shot part-way through.

Later, she performs Chalte chalte (“While walking along”) for the client who will take her out in a boat. Although the song is rhythmic and very danceable, she performs largely abhinay, expressive gestures with the upper half of the body while seated on the ground. This could be described as a partial dance and one that is embodied to a lesser degree. Later during the song, she gets up and dances in a curtailed and restrained way, faltering at one point. In contrast to this, two other courtesans dance energetically throughout, highlighting her distance from the scene.

Morcom then writes about half a paragraph on Sahib Jan’s actual meeting with the hero, Salim, and, especially, the emotional changes that take place. It’s too bad that Morcom skips over mentioning two excellent songs in the film, but it seems that she is mainly concerned with discussing the progression of the dances (and this is, after all, a book about dance). So, she moves right into her analysis of the climactic dance:

[S]he confides her feelings to her friend, seemingly resigning herself to her courtesan life in which she is a “living corpse” – body and soul disembodied to the point of a form of death. The sense of death and disembodiment is made complete in the finale, Aaj ham apni duaon ka asar dekhenge, “Today we shall see the outcome of our desires, the meaning of our dreams.” Halfway through the song, she smashes a glass lantern and dances on the broken glass, destroying her dancing feet, and with them her courtesan/performing/defiled body and persona.

Morcom writes quite a bit more about Pakeezah, but I think I will stop here, having finished the particular tribute that I wanted to post. I will probably return to Illicit Worlds of Indian Dance another time, and then, I will review the book a little further, hopefully without excerpting or quoting from it excessively (though I am tempted to do so, as you can see).

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P.S. By the way, just a few weeks ago, on March 10, another person in this film actually celebrated a birthday, and she is alive and well (as far as I know), at the age of 66. That is Padma Khanna, Meena Kumari’s dancing double in “Aaj ham apni…” She presently lives in New Jersey, where she runs the Indianica Dance Academy.

Venturing to a slightly different place once again… Actually, I have done posts on Egyptian dancers, mostly about four to five years ago. (Unfortunately, if you look back at some of those posts now, you’ll see that most of the clips are gone, but I intend to replace them soon.) Those posts included a few clips by the ’70s-’80s dancer named Fifi Abdou, but I also featured Tahia Carioca, Samia Gamal, and Hind Rostom, who all came from the Golden Age. Egypt’s Golden Age of cinema happened very close in time to India’s, beginning in the 1940s and extending into the ’60s. Having looked at a lot of Egyptian movies at this point, I think it’s fair to say that there also are close parallels between this cinema and Indian cinema in the song-and-dance sequences, with the main difference being that the Egyptian dances were mostly Middle Eastern (of course). But there was a good deal of variety in these Egyptian dances, too, and sometimes one could see some Indian elements as well as a lot of other things. (As we know, there are a lot of Bollywood dances that include belly dancing, sometimes with a distinctly Middle Eastern look. Well, in Egyptian cinema we can see many dances starting as Middle Eastern dances or belly dances and extending into something else.) Some of these Egyptian dances also took on very modern and Western qualities – just as the Indian ones sometimes did…

Naima Akef was probably the most eclectic of the dancers that I have seen. She may not have been quite as renowned as Tahia Carioca or Samia Gamal, but she was certainly up there in appeal, and I have been wanting to write a post on her because some of her dances contained such an incredible variety as well as being excellent and fun. Additionally, she choreographed many of her own dances, and she sometimes even headed a Naima Akef Dance Troupe.

I am going to start this selection with her most strange and possibly most modern dance, “Mambo.” As I’ve said elsewhere, I have seen nothing like this before. After that one, I’ve thrown in six more, which fall all along the spectrum from modern cabaret to traditional Egyptian folk dance. Rather than going into any descriptions of those, I’ll let the dances speak for themselves (because they certainly do speak for themselves – and because that means less work for me).

By the way, you might notice a different format here, because I have decided to use Vimeo as the source. The first clips are smaller than the latter ones, because that’s the way they come at Vimeo (and I don’t know if there’s any way to change that). Nonetheless, I’m glad that I’ve dipped into Vimeo because after so much YouTube, it seems refreshing, somehow.

This post is going to be a little different from what you have seen here in recent months, because I have gotten the urge to throw together some of my favorite contemporary versions of old Hindi film songs. The songs that I am including also come from a slightly wider range than the area that I usually focus on these days, stretching in one case all the way into the early 1970s. But all of these songs were composed by music directors who produced many classics during the Golden Age, and all of them were originally sung by artists who became prominent during the Golden Age or the Vintage Era.

I have posted some of these covers before, but never as part of a unified, multi-song theme post. I have also posted collections of contemporary covers before, but this time around (unlike before), I am consciously avoiding the world of electronic club remixes (with their accompanying sleazy videos, etc.).

But I am not avoiding electronic music entirely…which brings me to the first selection here. Actually, this is the song that inspired me to put together a favorite-contemporary-versions post. It is one that I discovered very recently, a cover of a song that came out in 1958. The artist covering it is Vasuda Sharma, and you might say that I am pretty taken with her. I don’t like all of the things she does, but that’s because she has such an eclectic repertoire that it would be impossible even for someone like me to like it all. One commonality that you can find in much of her material is her use of technological looping. Actually, she does a lot of live looping. What that means is that she creates a musical sound (often with her voice alone), instantly records it into a looping machine operated by a foot pedal, and lets the recorded riffs or vocal parts repeat and build upon each other while she continues to perform live, record while she performs, etc. There are a few artists who use this technological process now, but at least some try to hide it, while Vasuda actually calls attention to it – in some very fun and playful ways. This performance of “Hai Apna Dil To Awara” from Solva Saal (1958) is one place where she does that. It might not be to everyone’s tastes, but I think it’s a lot of fun, and she is brilliant.

In the same year as Solva Saal, there was a movie that came out called Howrah Bridge with a famous song that many, many people like to cover, probably in great part because it reminds them of a famous dance by Helen. Very early in the history of this blog, I discovered a cover of this song by a Boston-based band called Tandoori Jukebox. This is actually one of my favorite renditions of that old song, but it remains completely obscure, and the group, itself, seems to have disbanded fairly quickly. That’s too bad, but we’ll always have their version of “Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu” to remember them by…

I consider this next act as being somewhat in the same vein as Tandoori Jukebox – or at least one reminds me of the other to some extent – although these people are much better known. Moreover, I have been a fan of the singer, Najma Akhtar, for about 20 years. Najma is a Pakistani-British singer who gained quite a reputation as a fusion artist in the ’90s, putting out solo albums but also working with some pretty big British rock stars such as Jah Wobble and Robert Plant. (In fact, she was Robert Plant’s girlfriend for two years – but never mind that gossip.) Then, in the mid-late ’90s, she collaborated with a U.S.-based “Indo-pop” artist named Chris Rael, and they released an album called “Forbidden Kiss,” which consisted entirely of music by S.D. Burman. There are some good ’60s classics on the album and there might even be something from the ’50s or earlier. But I wanted to include a video that shows the collaborative act performing live, and the one that I found is a clip of Najma singing for Chris Rael’s full band, Church of Betty. This song is from a movie that came out in 1971, and it’s another song that will remind a lot of people of Helen.

This next cover brings us back into very obscure territory, but it got some nice responses when I posted it a few years ago. I would describe it as a guitar-based folk-rock rendition, and it certainly is a unique way to interpret “Awaz De Kahan Hai.” I wish this version had become better known, because I’m quite fond of it.

And I’ll close the list with Suzana Ansar. More than seven years ago, I posted a clip of Suzana singing a one-minute version of “Madhuban Mein Radhika Nache Re” in a small room – probably a hotel room – and probably as a rehearsal for an upcoming show. Now, finally, over on Dailymotion, I have found a clip of her singing the full version on stage. The audio part is far from perfect, because it is cluttered with distracting crowd noises from the performance space. (I am not sure where this is, but it says that it’s for “786 TV.” Well, OK…) But above the distracting noises, you can still hear Suzana’s wonderful voice. She is a Bangla-British singer with some popularity (so I have heard), and that popularity is certainly well deserved.

Tansen is a sweet film with beautiful singers and a brilliant music director. Khemchand Prakash has been one of my favorite music directors since I saw Mahal (back during the first year of this blog), and I like Khursheed so much, I have been listening to a double-CD of her songs regularly for at least a couple of years. And I do like the voice of K.L. Saigal, which seems to grow on me continually. He is definitely one of my favorite male singers…

I should say more, but I don’t really know how to give either singer adequate praise. On the other hand, I can show some examples of their greatness via clips from Tansen, which clearly illustrates how much their voices could accomplish…

Because, you see, K.L.Saigal’s voice is so brilliant, it can light a house full of candles!

But at times, it is so soothing, it can calm a raging elephant.

And Khursheed’s voice is so moving, it can cause the clouds to burst.

…Which explains why it is so relatively easy for her to get the attention of livestock.

Meanwhile, when they sing together, it can… Oh, never mind, let’s just say it is sweet, indeed.

And that pretty much sums up Tansen. It’s a simple and straightforward fable (about a legendary singer named Tansen), and it’s very uplifting. Though it is not, I should mention, a film to look to for fine acting… (Khursheed and K.L. Saigal did have their moments here, and Khursheed, in particular, had a very expressive face. But as for the rest of the cast…) Additionally, it is probably not much of a source of historical realism and accuracy, nor does it ever even come close to being philosophically or metaphorically deep. (If you’re looking for a Tansen-related tale with great ambitions to be deep, go and watch Baiju Bawra. Though I’m not sure those ambitions were fulfilled so well…) But for me, at least, all those shortcomings are almost beside the point. I am certainly glad that I had a chance to see Tansen and, especially, to hear it.

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P.S. January 18 is K.L. Saigal’s death anniversary. I actually did not know about that until I was just about ready to start this write-up, but even if it is basically a result of coincidence, I am glad that I can post something to honor him today.

The other day, I walked into the New York Public Library’s Mid-Manhattan branch, and I was startled by the growing collection of vintage Hindi films. I’m not talking about hundreds or thousands here – maybe little more than a dozen, actually. But it is still surprising, considering that vintage Hindi films used to be virtually nonexistent at this library in prior years, and it was difficult just a couple of years ago even to find films from the peak of the Golden Age. In the Bollywood DVD stores of Jackson Heights that I used to frequent, it wasn’t that uncommon to find movies from the early ’50s, but even at the largest of those places, pre-partition films were scarce. But at the NYPL the other day, there were actually more than a few available, going back to the 1930s.

I should add that I am not talking about the heavily guarded and strictly controlled research center of the Library for the Performing arts, which was praised at Minai’s blog last spring. I am talking about the regular Midtown branch, where you can easily check out a whole bunch of films with a one-week deadline, take them home, and then renew them a number of times later via phone or computer, without even having to make an extra trip.

Some people have said, well, the library is a wonderful source for things, etc., but it has not been so wonderful for these things during most of the time that I’ve been looking for them, and I am delighted at the recent change.

There might be some reasons why this is happening that have nothing to do with the NYPL. For one thing, whatever problems we might have with Shemaroo – i.e., with the technical quality of their DVDs (which actually isn’t all that bad, relatively speaking) or their unwelcome crackdowns on YouTube – they deserve praise for putting out so many new DVDs of very old films in their Vintage Black & White Classics series. I would say that this was the source of the majority of vintage films that I saw at the NYPL (possibly by far). Additionally, we can still count on Friends to continue releasing vintage movies. (Their reputation for quality is a little lower, and deservedly so. But if you can get a Friends DVD to play all the way through, you’ve overcome the first hurdle, and it might turn out to be quite enjoyable.)

I think that Indian DVD companies also became more aware of the global interest in older Hindi movies during 2013, when there was an explosion of articles and events observing Bollywood’s centennial. And that has been one very positive recent change in the world of Indian DVD sales – where we really needed positive changes, too.

To give you some idea of what you can find at this Mid-Manhattan library, within five minutes I spotted: Aag, Aurat (1940), Dil Ki Rani (with Raj Kapoor and Madhubala), Prithvi Vallabh, Afsana (1951), Lal Haveli (two copies), Pukar, Sheesh Mahal, Tansen (with K.L. Saigal and Khursheed), Sister aka Behen (1941), Roti (1942), Ratan (1944), and Humayun (that epic history film starring a 15- or 16-year-old Nargis). And I should add that all of these had English subtitles. (I also saw Dard on the shelf, but it didn’t have English subtitles – which is actually unusual for a Hndi DVD being circulated in New York).

I took home a few of these, and within the next few weeks, I am planning to take home more. (Although I have already viewed and reviewed some of them, thanks to some Bollywood DVD stores and that Tommydan YouTube channel that I’m always referring to…)

And by the way, I have started watching Tansen, which I am enjoying very much. (Wow, what voices! They are soothing enough to pacify a raging elephant!)

Hopefully, my discovery of this NYPL treasure trove will mean more reviews here in the future (though I won’t promise, of course). But for now, I had to write this post to give credit where it is very much due. Thank you, New York Public Library!

While I have gotten to like other music directors from the ’40s more and more, I would still say that Naushad was the greatest from the ’40s as well as the ’50s. A large part of the reason that I love his music so much is that he brought out the best vocal performances from several of my favorite singers, including Noor Jehan, Suraiya, Surendra, Mohammed Rafi, and Shanshad Begum. But Naushad also composed music for some instrumental dance numbers, and they are positively delightful, even though they might not be as well known as his vocal songs. So, this time around, for Naushad’s birthday, I thought I’d do something a little different and bring a bunch of these together.

Unfortunately, it was difficult to find separate, isolated videos for all the dance scenes that i thought about, and that is why this list gets a little strange at the end. But I didn’t want to omit anything, because all of these are so good! So, here we go (in no particular order except, mostly, when they came to mind)…

1. Cuckoo in Anokhi Ada — Actually, I am very glad to start with Cuckoo, because I could not take my mind off her after the last post. And this dance here is quite a treat. In fact, I am pretty sure that someone mentioned this as being one of her better-known, breakthrough dances, but if I am wrong about that, let’s say that it definitely deserves to be.

2. The snake dance from Dastan — I actually posted this to my own YouTube channel about five years ago, although it, like every other video that I posted there, was originally prepared by Tom Daniel and posted to one of his sites at some time or other. But back when Tom sent me this video, neither of us could identify the dancers. I figured out at some point that the male dancer was probably Krishna Kumar, who also choreographed the dance. This was confirmed in a comment to my post very recently. But neither Tom nor I nor anyone else seemed to think at first that the other dancer might be Cuckoo, which is what the recent comment poster also said. And that makes sense… I still find it difficult to recognize her face here in this lighting, etc., but if that’s not Cuckoo, then who else could it be? And if it is, then why wasn’t she billed for this film in any of the listings that I saw? Anyway, it is a terrific dance.

3. The festival dance in Mela — Naushad composed music for a few group festival dances, and this is one of the very best. It also makes for one of the few cheery moments in a relentlessly depressing film.

4. Cuckoo in Aan – There she is again! Since it is Aan, though, everything seems a bit sillier here than in the other films that I have mentioned. But it is good, of course. (By the way, I have had to edit this description because of more things received from Mel. In the comments, you’ll see Mel pointing out that, contrary to what I had said before, this was not Cuckoo’s only dance in color. Also, as with some other clips, I had complained about the quality of the one I had up – but now I can’t do that, because he posted a better version!)

5. The “Blind Man’s Bluff” dance in Dillagi – They are playing Blind Man’s Bluff, but most of them are also dancing. The village girl gang did some other, very nice dancing elsewhere in this movie, but I think that this was the only instrumental dance number. Of course, this film was also full of wonderful songs sung by the star of this scene, Suraiya.

6. Sitara Devi’s dance in Mother India – This is a very short dance and it leads into the first song, but I definitely would consider it a separate dance, and I also might consider it the most important part of the movie, given the great performance by Sitara Devi. Unfortunately, I think the video is also cut off a moment early, and it is not of the best quality, either. But it is still soo great to watch!

7. The festival group dance from Dulari and 8. Geeta Bali’s gypsy dance in the same film – Here’s where I had to sort of cheat a little, because I could not find a separate clip for Geeta Bali’s dance, but I did find a longer clip that included it with the group dance. The group dance is at the beginning and Geeta Bali’s instrumental dance is at the end (starting at about 11;05). There are also two songs in between, one of which stars Madhubala, whose face we see before the video starts. For the purposes of this post, those songs don’t count, though, of course, everyone is free to enjoy them, too.

I had hoped to include another instrumental dance video, but I guess it’s been taken down. I did have a nice still from it, though, so let’s close with that: a pic from Suraiya’s lovely little semi-classical dance at the miserable wedding in Anmol Ghadi:

As most readers of this blog probably know, a lot of conversation related to old posts can be found via the links in the Recent Comments section in the right sidebar. I hope that people look at these at least sometimes, because I think that much of the most interesting material in the seven-and-a-half year history of this blog has been posted in its comments sections. But there also are occasional times when I feel inspired to bring an old conversation to people’s attention through a new post. And this is definitely one of them…

Within the past ten days, in comments to a Cuckoo birthday post that first appeared in this blog almost four years ago, our friend Mel posted a whole lot of information and speculation regarding the early films of Cuckoo, as well as some great Cuckoo pics from mid-1940s editions of Filmindia. I was going to simply post the links to those comments (basically repeating what you can find in the sidebar right now), but I have decided to post excerpts from Mel’s post here, too, because some of this stuff is great!

Mel began the conversation by pointing out a Filmindia still from Zeenat (1945). It is from the song “Dulhan Ban Jao,” which I had also put up as the last of eight clips in the body of the post. But no still that I could have taken from that video would have matched this clear pic of Cuckoo holding Noor Jehan’s hand at a filmi bridal shower. And that’s the pic that you see at the top of this post. Isn’t it beautiful?

Then Mel went on to link to Filmindia pics of Cuckoo from a couple of other movies:

And it got even more interesting when Mel offered some words about the film Man Ki Jeet:

Cuckoo is so mysterious that this is a never-ending thread :) Filmindia does not give much direct information on her. She is mentioned as early as in November 1945 for a movie called Mun-Ki-Jeet (Man Ki Jeet on Wikipedia). She was probably not credited in the film, but her performance must have been so impressive that the reviewer wrote: “The most reprehensible item in the picture is the vulgar dance of Cuckoo in the presence of Prakash. The words of this song are rather unhappy and the actual pictorial portrayal of the the dance becomes vulgar and repulsive owing to the pointed gestures of the artiste. It is surprising that a man of Ahmed’s fine culture and education should have permitted this dance to go in.” I’m dying to see that dance!

And now for the best part, coming from a message a few days later:

I was watching Prithvi Vallabh the other night, and at the end of the movie, during the “elephant scene,” in the middle of a group of girls, I saw a familiar face! Here are the pictures, enlarged and slightly enhanced, taken from Tom’s version (superb job BTW !):

I’ve copied one of those screen caps, and I would love it if anyone else could confirm that this actress in the 1943 film Prithvi Vallabh actually is a young teenage Cuckoo:

Meanwhile, I might take a look again at the link that Mel supplied for a very comprehensive post that he wrote about Cuckoo in French. I can’t read French too well (I actually failed it in college more than 30 years ago), but this post is worth a look just for the pics, clips, and extremely extensive filmography.

Thank you, Mel!

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P.S. The conversation that I’ve excerpted from for this post starts here.

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